Participatory Design of a Serious Game to Improve Wildfire Preparedness with Community Residents and Experts

Serious games can be a valuable addition to the resources available for increasing community resilience in the face of disaster. The purpose of this project is to work closely with two communities at risk of wildfire to design and develop a serious game that can be used by experts and leaders within those communities as part of their holistic approach to increasing resilience and improving readiness of their community members. We follow a community-centric approach, utilizing Participatory Design and Research through Design to engage directly with community members and local experts. This paper documents our findings at two workshops involving the early game designs and contributes to the broader exploration of the use of Participatory Design with serious games in support of community initiatives around disaster preparedness.